This is What a Feminist Blogs Like

I suppose today is a particularly good one to talk about the elections and patriotism.  My thoughts on this subject started a few weeks ago.  My best friend’s boyfriend is going to be applying for Ph.D. programs this fall.  He’s applying to eight schools, two of which are in Canada.  He’s going to apply to these two schools because the two of them have decided that they are going to leave the United States if John McCain gets elected.

These sorts of statements sadden me.  Not just because my best friend will live in another country, but because I think it actually shows a lack of patriotism.  I know our country is flawed.  I know that I live in a state that used to be Mexico and was basically stolen.  I know that, while our country is better off than many other countries, we still have yet to correct discrepancies in education, inadequate healthcare, homelessness, hunger, and sexism.  But despite all of these flaws, I’m not about to give up.  If McCain does get elected in November, I’m not going to say “screw it, I’m blowing this popsicle stand.”  Because despite all that’s wrong with the United States, I still care about this country, I still believe in democracy, and I want to work to make it a better place.

My feminism informs my patriotism and citizenship quite a bit.  When I was refusing to identify as a feminist, I was not politically involved and I was not keeping up with current events.  I was completely apathetic to the world beyond my college campus.  When I look back on it now, I am ashamed of my self-absorption.  But as I returned to feminism, I suddenly got much more involved in the world at large.  I started paying attention to the happenings around town, in the state, in the country, and all over the world.  I began showing an interest in politics.  And I began to voice opinions and take action.  Feminism shook me from my complacent state.  It made me start caring about this country and the rest of the world.  It took me out of myself.  And while feminism has helped me become attuned to all the injustices taking place, it also showed me that the only way to change things isn’t to jump ship, but to fix the problem.

I don’t want John McCain to get elected in November.  But if he does, I’m not going to just abandon a country I have come to love (despite its flaws).  Instead, I am going to stay here.  I am going to keep a careful watch on what he is doing, and what the other branches of government are doing.  If necessary, I will take action, whether that involves writing letters or something far more radical.

BrokenBeautiful Press is sponsoring a summer study group entitled “Summer of Our Lorde: Radical Study and Intentional Healing.”  The blog has been up for almost a month now, and I wish I had heard about it sooner! (Although there is still plenty of time to participate; I’m just excited).  Audre Lorde has inspired me ever since I read Zami three years ago.  While I feel a little outside my comfort zone (I’ve always been uncomfortable discussing race, for some reason), I look forward to taking part.  I think I will write responses to the discussion questions and, instead of just commenting on the Summer of Our Lorde blog, put essay versions of them up here as well. 

Unfortunately, I think I’m going to be doing a lot of solo study this summer . . . my best friend unfortunately does not share my passion for Lorde’s writing.  Hopefully I can get my partner interested in at least trying one essay.  If not, maybe I will poke around some Austin communities online and see if I can generate enough interest for a meeting or two, just so I can bounce my ideas off of actual people.  I mean, I love to write and post here, but I spent six years studying literature, and that meant discussing your reading with at least one other person.  I didn’t even write in isolation; my housemates and I all sat around the table writing papers together.  As much as I love my solitude, literary appreciation is in part a communal act, and I want to study Lorde with others if at all possible.

H/T to The F Word

I’ve been pondering a comment my sister made over the weekend.  At my wedding reception, she said in her toast that I “used to be such a feminist.”  But apparently, I’m not much of a feminist anymore, especially because I decided to get married.  If only she knew . . .

My sister and I don’t spend much time discussing politics or philosophy, so she hasn’t really seen my feminism wane and then wax again over the past few years.  In fact, I consider myself more of a feminist than I did back in high school, because feminism has become much more meaningful to me.  In high school, I admit that I had the attitude of “all men are the scum of the earth” without considering what patriarchy really meant, how embedded it was in society, and the ways in which race and class factored in.  My feminist understanding was unsophisticated and lacking in good critical understanding of politics and philosophical principles.  But now, thanks to six years of expensive education, I have a more nuanced appreciation of gender and relevant intersections.  I’m much more of an activist than I used to be; I write letters to representatives, donate money to pro-choice organizations, and participate in other forms of activism when my day job allows for it.  My feminism has become more dynamic and critical.  Furthermore, the fact that I married does not make me less of a feminist.  Yes, I was “doing gender” all Saturday, going beyond a comfortable level of feminine dress and behavior.  However, we also had many egalitarian elements to our wedding.  I chose an egalitarian text for our ketubah contract, and we each stepped on a glass at the conclusion of the ceremony.  My partner and I were both playing up specific gender roles, but we also were infusing something traditional with more progressive values.

I think I need to talk to my sister and explain my feminism a little better.  It’s not that her comment offended me; I’m not insulted, because I know that I am a feminist, and I know that I practice that feminism on a daily basis.  But I am concerned because her comment reflects a limited knowledge of feminism.  It still surprises me that young women have a limited knowledge of feminist understanding.  It’s almost as though, apart from suffragism and the ERA, feminist thought has been wiped out of many history books.  I could be wrong, but it seems to me that unless you’re studying the social sciences or humanities (my sister is studying neither), you’re not even going to get exposed to feminist theory in college, unless you happen upon it outside of class or seek it yourself.  And that is disheartening. 

I cannot believe that, with the abundance of free information available today, intelligent and independent women such as my sister still think that all feminists are “feminazis” who hate all men.  I have seen examples of such behavior on blogs and in other publications, so it’s not like this is a sudden revelation or anything.  But it didn’t really hit me until I heard it reflected in my sister’s words.  She and I went through the same elementary and high schools.  We had similar social circles (she was friends with the younger siblings of my friends).  Although she chose a different college than I did, we still both attended excellent undergraduate institutions.  So how did I come out a feminist, while she does not seem to recognize the depth and breadth of feminist thought?

Perhaps my adolescent anti-male ramblings turned her off of feminism.  I hope that’s not entirely the case, but I don’t doubt I played at least some part in her decision to avoid feminism.  But I did not realize the limitations of her understanding until this weekend.  And since I’m sure I played at least a small part in it, I think I need to make an effor to show her how dynamic feminism really is; if she doesn’t want to be a feminist, fine, but I need to make a reasonable effort to show her the feminist I have become.

Peggy Drexler has an article in the Huffington Post entitled “Sexism, Politics, and Equal-Opportunity: Media Doesn’t Just Pick on the Girls.”  I don’t agree with Drexler completely, but I don’t think she’s entirely in the wrong, either.  Both male and female candidates are treated unfairly during campaigns.  They’re not always judged by their qualifications.  Sometimes, their families are targeted unfairly.  Nonetheless, I think women are still treated differently.  Yes, both men and women have to deal with mudslinging.  But was Obama ever criticized about his pantsuits?  Has McCain ever been criticized for being “shrill”?  If the media were equal-opportunity criticizers, there would be much more of a focus on what male candidates wear.

Also in the Huffington Post, Melissa Silverstein has a piece entitled “The Fascination with Celebrity Women in Crisis.”  America  has a celebrity obsession, and I do think that the “women in crisis” trope has a huge corner on that market.  That’s part of the reason I quit reading gossip blogs and avoid the entertainment sections of periodicals (both online and print).  I realized that they’re an invasion of privacy, but they also conflicted with my feminist insistence on seeking out media that portrays women in a positive light.

Kathleen O’Connor of Unscripted has a great post on “How Marriage Changes Nothing - And Everything.”  It is, of course, oddly perfect timing.  I’ve been married for less than 72 hours at this point, but I’ve had at least five people ask “so how does it feel to be married?”  And honestly, it doesn’t feel any different than when my partner and I were not married.  But people don’t seem to like that response.  They seem to be expecting that overnight, my life will have changed completely.  I guess it has, but it doesn’t feel that way.  I got married on Saturday afternoon, and on Monday morning I was back at work.  I still see my best friend every night after work, and talk to her on the phone for at least 30 minutes a day.  I still go to the gym at lunch, go to yoga class twice a week, and watch The Daily Show before going to bed.  Nothing feels different about my life or our relationship. 

In fact, the only thing that feels different as a newlywed is the way in which other people perceive me.  It’s as if I’m suddenly expected to turn domestic (while I am a great cook, I’m nonetheless a far cry from a housewife), drop my hobbies, make our relationship monogamous, and take an entirely different outlook on life.  Now that my partner and I are legally bound together, our lives are supposed to be focused on each other.  Even my more liberal acquaintances have some expectation of this.  Now that I am a “wife,” people think of me in a certain way.  This is part of the reason why I only refer to my partner as my husband when talking with specific people (some people hate it when I refer to him as my partner).  We are married, but whatever a traditional husband and wife are supposed to do, we don’t do it.  The problem for me is that “wife” and “husband” are incredibly loaded terms that carry connotations that do not reflect our relationship.  Furthermore, I think both terms carry an inequality that “partner” does not; we’re an egalitarian couple and I use words to describe that aspect of our relationship. 

If a married couple wants to refer to each other as a husband and wife, I don’t have a problem with it.  I’m not out to banish words from the language just because they don’t reflect my situation.  What I’m trying to do is use language and action in a way that shows people what our marriage is like.  And hopefully, both words and actions will help illustrate that marriage doesn’t necessarily change everything. 

There’s a great discussion that has been going on over at Friendly Atheist concerning the entry “Can You Be a Pro-Life Atheist?”  I haven’t weighed in on the discussion as it was posted 4 days ago, I’m just reading it now (no internet at the place I was staying this weekend), and there are over 120 comments.  My position on it is that atheism does not necessarily mean that one is going to be pro-choice; you can both not believe in a god and also believe that abortion is immoral; they’re not mutually exclusive.  There isn’t one type of atheist and one type of pro-life person out there in the world.  Although it’s harder for me to comprehend a pro-life atheist than a pro-life feminist.  I think it’s because so much pro-life rhetoric is really anti-choice rhetoric.  And it’s difficult for me to dissociate feminism with the right to make reproductive choices.

Natalie Kogan at the Huffington Post has a piece entitled “Waiting to Have Kids: Good for your Career or too Risky?”  I think the “when should I have kids” question is one that needs to be answered entirely by the individual couple (or just individual if they’re really willing to be a single parent).  Yes, pregnancy can become more risky the longer you wait, and you probably will be able to have fewer children.  But not everyone wants 4 kids.  As long as every person is aware of the potential risks they face, they should make that decision for themselves.  The child issue is one of the most personal decisions you can ever make, and you shouldn’t be swayed by propaganda.

Also from the Huffington Post: “Why Having Kids Might Make You Happy.”  What interests me most is the word “might.”  Having kids might make you happy.  It might not.  That’s up to each individual person out there, and I think it’s important for people to recognize what will and will not leave them fulfilled.  There are some great comments at the post, too.  It makes me happy to see lots of people advocating adoption.  I don’t want kids, but if I ever changed my mind, I’d adopt.  Both of my mom’s cousins adopted, and I love both boys as I would any biological offspring.  I can’t imagine our family without them anymore.  I think adoption is a worthwhile and fulfilling choice, and I’m always happy to see it getting more attention.

Finally, Jay at Two Women Blogging has a post entitled “Raising Feminist Men.”  I think it can be a struggle to raise both girls and boys with feminist principles.  Not that I know anything whatsoever about raising children.  But consider how easily we can be brainwashed to follow gender rules without even realizing it, I think any discussion about raising feminist children is important.

I’m back in Austin, back at work, and this time I’m wearing a wedding band.  To summarize the past few days: I arrived in Cleveland on Wednesday afternoon, spent 72 hours doing “bride stuff,” which largely involved getting stressed out and running around, got married, had a blast at the reception, spent yesterday running around saying goodbye to people, and not getting to bed until 1 a.m. this morning due to flight delays.

As I’ve mentioned before, I am happy to have gotten married.  But I never really wanted the wedding; I wanted the courthouse.  And yes, the ceremony was lovely.  But I had the best time celebrating at the reception with family and friends.  I would have been happy to go to the courthouse and then throw a huge dinner party.  But while I wasn’t entirely happy with having the wedding, I’ve actually isolated the source of my discomfort with the whole thing.

Last Tuesday, I emailed one of the only married friends I have, because I was freaking out.  I wasn’t regretting my decision to get married, but I nonetheless had an “I can’t do this” kind of feeling.  Mel pointed out that this was probably performance anxiety/stage fright.  After all, a wedding ceremony is a sort of performance.  Thinking about her points, I realized why I was so unhappy planning the traditional wedding, and why I was so stressed over the next several days: in agreeing to the traditional wedding, I ended up “doing gender” in a way that makes me uncomfortable and does not fit with my identity.

I’ve always found Judith Bulter’s concept of gender performance to be somewhat confusing, but I’ve come to an understanding of the basics: gender is not a biological instinct, but instead a series of learned behaviors that we perform or do not perform.  Performative behaviors vary based on family and culture.  I do gender by plucking my unibrow, by wearing a wedding band (and previously wearing an engagement ring), by wearing skirts to work, by using lipgloss, and probably a few other things that I’m not conscious of.  But I also do not “do” the female gender because I don’t shave my legs, I burp “like a man” (that is, I’m not ladylike about it), I don’t like what are commonly referred to as “girly drinks,” and while I did struggle with body image problems when I was a dance student, I am not concerned about my weight or breast size or really anything about my less-than-perfect body the way that many women seem to be.  In short, I’m feminine, but I’m also not feminine, and I’ve found characteristics from both genders that I’m comfortable with and perform on a regular basis.

But with the wedding, I took on a way more feminine role than I am used to.  Somehow, I ended up planning and organizing pretty much the whole event, grudgingly ordering flowers and choosing hair accessories with little interest in either.  I don’t know why I let myself get sucked into it, but I did, and perhaps I’ll never understand my internal motivations for doing so.  Anyway, while I do wear skirts to work, the big wedding gown was something I was not comfortable in, and something I wasn’t that interested in, either.  Someone did my hair; someone else did my makeup, because aside from lipgloss, I don’t own any and don’t bother with it.  Between the hair and the dress and the makeup, I was transformed into your typical bride/princess, and I am anything but that.  I ended up being turned into someone else, and playing the role of someone else.  I was enacting a gender performance that did not work with the gender identity I have on other days.  I disliked the wedding because it required that I perform in ways that don’t work for me.

I wonder if, had I been more attuned to the ways in which the wedding was making me perform, I could have better explained to my partner the reasons for not wanting a traditional wedding ceremony.  Although it’s a moot point now, I guess.  I didn’t like doing that kind of femininity, but I did it, it didn’t kill me, and I had a nice dinner afterwards.  I can now resume my normal life and my personal preference for gender behavior and performance.

Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage is Jenny Block’s portrayal of her life as she and her husband transition from monogamy to an open relationship.  The book starts with an overview of her early relationships in high schools and college, but focuses on her marriage, her ultimate dissatisfaction with monogamy, and the ways in which she and her husband have developed an approach to open marriage that leaves them both happy, and their partnership stronger than ever.

Block’s conversational tone and casual language are a large part of Open’s success.  She blends memoir with supplemental readings and research in a way that both educates her audience about open marriage as well as sharing her direct experience and advice.  The combination of information and introspection makes Open ideal for couples who are beginning to explore the possibility of an open relationship.  I wish this book had been available just a few months earlier, as my partner and I were beginning to make the transition.  The friendly nature of the text is also helpful for people researching open relationships because they wish to support a friend or relative who has an open relationship of any kind.

Open is also a great read for open couples who are struggling with feeling isolated for whatever reason.  When you’re in an open relationship, even if your friends are supportive, you may feel alone because you don’t actually know any other open couples who really understand your choices.  But Block’s book helps make readers realize that they are definitely not alone.  In addition, open relationships can seem isolating because it can be difficult to find partners who are interested in participating in any sort of poly situation.  Open shows the reader that many open couples share these problems.

I think Open has the potential to attract a wide audience.  People who are vehemently opposed to anything other than traditional monogamy aren’t going to enjoy it, but otherwise it has the ability to educate anyone interested in understanding open relationships, even though they don’t intend to have one themselves.  Open and plural arrangements still get a bad rap in this country, and events like the evacuation of children from the FLDS compound in Texas aren’t doing anything to help matters.  This is especially true because people seem to lump all kinds of open/poly arrangements together into one type of deviant lifestyle.  But Open is a work that will show you the ways in which non-monogamous relationships do work, and do so in a way that they are fair and respectful to everyone involved.  She also demonstrates the ways in which those relationships can evolve, and that there isn’t just one right way to do open marriage that definitely works for everyone.

Grade: A

Don’t expect much substantial posting until Monday . . . it’s a crazy week, to say the least (which is a bummer, because I have a LOT of potential posts just sitting around in my head).  However, I’ll be keeping up with reading and linking as much as time allows, because it seems the internet is booming with great articles and posts during the exact week when I have no time to write about them.

Call for Nominations for the History Lab Committee.  The committee will work to support the History Lab, a UK organization.  The Committee is looking for a chairperson, as well as additional members.  Members will be selected during the AGM conference on June 26th.

Call for Authors: Feminist Legal History.  Editors Tracy Jean Boisseau, Ph.D., and Tracy J. Thomas, J.D., M.P.A., are seeking chapter submissions for Feminist Legal History: New Perspectives on Law.  I really wish I knew more about law, because this collection sounds great.  And the editors are from my hometown!  Hooray for Ohio!

Lots of great stuff today!  Not enough time to write about each, what with the day job, visitors coming into town, and then me heading out of town for the wedding.  But here are a few great things I’ve found today:

From The Huffington Post:
“Ladies Choice - What Does America Want” by Peggy Drexler.  A discussion about the future First Lady.  Now, in general, I dislike articles about candidate’s wives.  We’re not voting for their wives!  Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama are not running for President!  But I like Drexler’s piece because it focuses more on how the role of First Lady has changed.

“They Myth of Hillary Clinton and the Angry White Woman” by Lester Feder.  This peice argues that Obama isn’t losing voters due to gender, but due to his résumé.  I think that Clinton and Obama were equally politically inexperienced; I never understood the “Clinton is more qualified” school of thought.  But I like this perspective, and I’m glad to see someone recognizing that women aren’t defecting from the Democratic party because of gender.

From Feministe:
“What about the menz gets religion” by guest blogger Ashely.  I am interested in seeing how this discussion develops because I have a Jewish fiancé, and I’m always interested in the intersection of feminism and religion.

“Moral Refusal Clauses - More Than Just Contraception” by Jill.  Partially a review of some of the recent “moral refusals,” and a discussion on a new story.